Treat Gaza And Darfur As Equals

Rarely do I ever find myself agreeing with a Russian foreign policy official. But a Russian ambassador slammed his American counterpart, Susan Rice, for preaching the need to investigate war crimes in Darfur but ignoring similar alleged crimes in Gaza. Why should one be different from the other?

To be sure, war crimes accusations almost always come encumbered by politics. That is the charge levelled against the ICC for seeking a warrant for Sudan's Omar al-Bashir's arrest. That is the charge slapped against investigators of war crimes committed by Israeli and Palestinian forces in Gaza last winter.

But our ambassador cannot pick and choose which crimes the international community should investigate and which should be ignored. That taints the process and needlessly injects politics into the equation. The Arab world, not to mention several human rights organizations like Amnesty International, has rightfully criticized Rice for her double-standard on this issue.

Which is unfortunate: She has been a forceful advocate for a more robust and activist foreign policy to prevent further genocide in Sudan (perhaps burdened by her position in the Clinton administration when Washington stood by and did nothing to help Rwanda). She should throw her weight behind any effort that seeks to uncover similar attrocities in the Middle East.

Blackstone's Byron Wien, Vice Chairman of Private Wealth Solutions Group, gave a speech laying out the wisdom he learned during his 80 years. Here are 15 of Wien's best life lessons, which teach us about improving our productivity, sleep, burnout avoidance, and everything in between.

Why do people quit their jobs? Surely, there are a ton of factors: money, hours, location, lack of interest, etc. For Alison McMahon, an HR specialist and the CEO of TwoFold, the biggest reason employees jump ship is that they're tired of working for lousy bosses.

By and large, she says, people are willing to put up with certain negatives as long as they enjoy who they're working for. When that's just not the case, there's no reason to stick around:

Nine times out of ten, when an employee says they're leaving for more money, it's simply not true. It's just too uncomfortable to tell the truth.

Whether that's true is certainly debatable, though it's not a stretch to say that an inconsiderate and/or incompetent boss isn't much of a leader. If you run an organization or company, your values and actions need to guide and inspire your team. When you fail to do that, you set the table for poor productivity and turnover.

McMahon offers a few suggestions for those who want to hone their leadership abilities, though it seems that these things are more innate qualities than acquired skills. For example, actually caring about your workers or not depending wholly on HR thinking they can do your job for you.

It's the nature of promotions that, inevitably, a good employee without leadership skills will get thrust into a supervisory position. McMahon says this is a chronic problem that many organizations need to avoid, or at least make the time to properly evaluate and assist with the transition.

But since they often don't, they end up with uninspired workers. And uninspired workers who don't have a reason to stay won't stick around for long.